URLs du Jour

■ Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell went together like bacon and eggs.
(And there's a cliché Jimmy would never be caught writing.) I've
been a fan of both guys for decades. Both have had their personal
and professional ups and downs, both eventually triumphed over
demons.

Jimmy
recalls
the first time he met Glen, the first words Glen spoke
were… "When you gonna get a haircut?" This was after Glen had the
massive success singing Jimmy's "Wichita Lineman".

Let me share Jimmy's moving tribute to his friend. It's long (click
through for the whole thing), but moving.

■ But other than that, it's back to Google's burn-the-heretic
stupidity. We are a little National Review-heavy today,
let's start with Rich Lowry, who examines The
‘Anti-Diversity Screed’ That Wasn’t.

The first thing to know about the instantly infamous “anti-diversity
screed” written by an anonymous Google software engineer is that it
isn’t anti-diversity or a screed.

The loaded description, widely used in the press and on social
media, is symptomatic of the pearl-clutching over the memo, which
questions the premises and effectiveness of Google’s diversity
policies.

We'll have more on the "loaded description" below. Lowry should
call it out for what it is: a lie.

Like many religious idols, the new gods are available for the
crassest kind of religious manipulation. Adherents say that these
values are not only good but also that they bring grace and success
to all endeavors. They can be shoehorned into a kind of prosperity
Gospel. You shouldn’t just pursue them because they are good, but
because they will do good for you.

To anyone who’s actually read the memo, it’s clear a “tirade” is the
least accurate way to describe it. It’s calm, it’s rational, and not
at all angry or rant-like. Just because someone says something that
doesn’t fit a certain political agenda doesn’t mean it’s a “tirade.”

The late Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian, had an
essay
titled "The Answering of Kautski". It springs from this Lenin quote:

Why should we bother to reply to Kautski? He would reply to us, and
we would have to reply to his reply. There's no end to that. It will
be quite enough for us to announce that Kautski is a traitor to the
working class, and everyone will understand everything.

Mitchell was writing about American educationism, but it's not hard
at all to make the translation to this situation.

■ We linked yesterday to Gizmodo's version of (what it
called) the "Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed". But what they
claimed was "full" was actually edited to remove "two charts and
several hyperlinks". So you'll want to go to a more honest site to
read
"Google’s Ideological Echo
Chamber".

The "charts" do a good job of illustrating what the author's talking
about, and belies those (like CNN) who claim that the author
believes "women aren't
biologically fit for tech jobs".

The Google situation is a particularly maddening example of a
strange modern phenomenon — the vulnerable person who is so
exquisitely sensitive that he can act simultaneously as hostage and
hostage-taker. One Google apologist noted that some of the firm’s
employees were so distraught by . . . the discussion of opinions at
variance with their own . . . that they stayed home from work. Those
kinds of shrill theatrics used to be called “hysteria,” but we’ve
all been taught that that is a horribly sexist word, which means
that we’ll need a new word to describe women who are so emotionally
incontinent that they become non-functional human beings when it is
suggested that they are emotionally less continent than maybe they
could be.

Ironically, Google cited “perpetuating gender stereotypes” as the
reason for the author's firing. So all those ladies who couldn't
bear to go into work and retired to their fainting couches because
of their memo-induced emotional turmoil—they're not
perpetuating gender stereotypes?

[Update: Ann Althouse
plausibly
argues that the NPR-reported story about lady Googlers staying
home could be fake news.]

Protectionist trade policies being considered in Washington could
increase the cost of aluminum. American breweries say that means
you'll end up paying more for a can of beer.

In a letter to the president sent last week, some of the country's
most prominent breweries, soda companies, and aluminum can
manufacturers said they are worried about new tariffs on aluminum
imports reportedly being considered by the White House. "Import
restrictions or tariffs" on the types of aluminum alloys used to
make cans "will add hundreds of millions in costs for companies in
the food and beverage industry and will detrimentally affect over
82,000 American manufacturing jobs in industries that rely on these
products," the CEOs wrote.

Ha! I buy my beer in bottles, bitch!

But (looking around the kitchen) yeah, there's a lot of aluminum
here. Don't be stupid, Trump.

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